P2PU | Mental wealth: know it and grow it (2014)

Challenge 1

Perspectives on mental wellness

This challenge asks you to collect and summarise responses from your own peer networks (your family, your friends, your personal or professional networks, members of the public, teachers, doctors etc.) about one of the statements about mental wellness. (These were also introduced in Module 1 in the discussion forum activity).

The statements aim to represent a spectrum of perceptions about mental health that may be encountered. They are intended to provoke discussion and are examples of some of the real perceptions and stigma (explored later in this course) that can exist around mental health issues.

Mental wellness is achieved by being socially active, eating a balanced diet and exercising regularly.

People who have mental health problems have brought it on themselves.

Mental health problems have increased around the world due to a lack of personal and social (community) resilience.

How to complete this challenge

How you engage in this task is up to you. You could:

ask a few close friends
collect a range of responses via Facebook comments
make a short film or audio clip of yourself summarising your findings
create a blog post about the responses
create an image based on the main themes of the responses

Please keep your respondents anonymous. The idea is to analyse and interpret the responses and to create a summary of your own that is 'shareable'.

Suggested strategy

Choose one of the statements.
Decide how many people you will ask and how you will ask (in person, on Facebook, at lunch, at a family gathering etc.).
Collate all the responses together and create your summary. How did people react/respond to the statement? (Did they agree/disagree? Were there differences/similarities? What picture did the responses paint together?)
Share your resource by putting a link in the forum at the bottom of this page and be sure to allow time to have a look at other contributions.